Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Maya Kawana
This paper deals with the argument realization of particular nominal phrases in German.
The class of nominal phrases to be analyzed consists of nouns that are semantically and
morphologically related to psych-verbs (verbs of psychological state). If we paraphrase
a sentence in German with a verb into a nominal phrase, either the subject or object
argument is expressed by a noun phrase in genitive case. In principle, a noun related to
a transitive verb requires its object argument to be expressed in genitive case. Yet some
nouns related to psych-verbs such as Liebe (related to lieben ‘love’) require their object
argument to be expressed by a particular prepositional phrase. There are also some nouns
related to psych-verbs whose object argument can be realized either by a noun in genitive
case or by a prepositional phrase. This paper attempts to investigate what is relevant to the
realization of the object argument of the nouns noted above.
